Living conditions at the Northwest Detention Center in Washington state are alarmingly bad. Detainees eat rotten food and can go through long stretches of solitary confinement, with little to no communication with the outside world. The center is run like, or maybe even worse than, a prison.

Recently over 1,000 of the detainees, mostly Latino undocumented immigrants, have organized the only way they could — with a hunger strike to protest the living conditions. Reporter Ryan Katz goes inside the detention center to find out how and why these detainees have risked their health and their lives to be heard.

Ryan Katz is a writer and radio journalist based in Portland, Oregon. His work has centered on topics ranging from trends in political advertisements to post-9/11 Islamophobia. He currently works at Pagatim FM.